Welcome to the new job, Tristram Hunt. If you look to your left, you’ll see that because you aren’t advocating full local control over schools, you are clearly incapable of being ‘distinctive and principled’. And if you look to your right, you’ll see the infernal ranting of a man whose faux-confusion and outrage is hopefully confined to his columns rather than his classrooms.
No baptism of fire, but enough opening shots fired towards the new shadow education secretary from the comment pages to keep him on his toes. His intervention at the weekend, where he alluded to Labour’s rich historic link with education as the catalyst for equality was a strong response.
Hunt’s assertion that Labour wouldn’t close good free schools and backed parent-led academies was key, and the reaction to it – to crudely paraphrase: ‘yeah, we already knew that’ – shows the extent to which Labour education policy has undergone rehabilitation in opposition. Criticising Hunt’s predecessor, Stephen Twigg, for his efforts to move the party beyond a debate over school freedom which was over years ago, was always misguided.
It is a fairer assessment that Labour lost control of the education agenda some time before 2010. The Labour government built – literally, in some cases – the new consensus around what structures work. But education reform faltered when the Tories put their tanks on our lawn with free schools. It was at that point that opposition to free schools was needed; a commitment from the Brown government that it would relentlessly push the message that through academies, and particularly with local authorities as co-sponsors, there was a comfortable middle ground between local control and total freedom.
But progressive politics, let alone the specifics of public service reform, can’t be fought over what happened years ago but instead on what we want to achieve in the years to come. That involves accepting uncomfortable truths such as the one which told us we were on the back foot on education after the election. Like on the economy, the Tories stole a march on us while we were focused on ourselves, though that isn’t much excuse for Labour to have waited until 2011 to accept that Labour wouldn’t close free schools (ultimately a botched imitation of a successful Labour policy) if they were working.
Hunt has been tasked with the next stage of Labour’s education rehabilitation, which is arguably a far tougher one. He must decide on how to close the accountability gap that exists in England’s schools, and in doing so tackle the ills of Michael Gove’s project, including the practice of allowing unqualified teachers to teach.
There are plenty of options: IPPR has championed the creation of schools commissioners, for example. It is Hunt’s job to seek a sensible ‘middle-tier’ solution, but he will be served well by David Blunkett who was asked earlier this year to conduct a review into the proposed ideas.
When Labour has a suitable offer on accountable schools, of which parent-led academies are the start, Hunt will soon be able to push for reform elsewhere and move away from the debate on school freedom which has dominated for a decade.
With the groundwork on structural reform already done by the Labour government and his predecessor, the new job is perfect timing for the man who can become the first education secretary with the name Tristram.
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Alex White is a member of Progress and tweets @AlexWhiteUK
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